|
5339 Chamblee Dunwoody Road
Atlanta, GA 30338
Phone: 770-394-3447
Fax: 770-394-6179
Office Hours: Mon - Thur 9 am- 7 pm; Fri 9 am- 5 pm
The Spruill Center for the Arts was
founded in 1975 as a part of DeKalb County Government. In 1982,
it became a private nonprofit multi-disciplinary arts institution.
The Spruill Center for the Arts provides high-quality fine arts
programming for the community through classes in literary,
performing, and visual arts. It is supported in part by grants
from DeKalb Council for the Arts, Georgia Council for the
Arts, and National Endowment for the Arts. Donations to the
Spruill Center for the Arts are tax deductible.
The following information is from a
brochure distributed by the Spruill Center for the Arts and
written by Emily Pogue Henry.
The Spruill
Center for the Arts Gallery & Historic Home
is located at 4681
Ashford Dunwoody Road, Atlanta, GA 30338. They are open Wednesday
through Saturday from 11 am until 5 pm. Admission and parking are
free. They can be reached by phone at 770-394-4019 or by fax at
770-394-3987.
A History of
the Spruill Homeplace
The Spruill Homeplace in Dunwoody,
Georgia, was the center of a large working farm from the mid-19th
century until 1965. Today, the main house and two outbuildings
are still standing in good condition on the property. The house
has undergone numerous additions and renovations since being
built in the 1840s, and features a century's worth of phases and
styles of Southern folk architecture.
Through the generosity of
Onnie Mae Spruill, Stephen T. Spruill's
daughter, and Ethel Warren Spruill, his second
wife, the Spruill Homeplace and five surrounding acres have been
donated to the Spruill Center for the Arts to serve as a place to
foster the arts, and as a remembrance of one of Dunwoody's first
families, the Spruills.
A Pioneer
Homestead
James T. Spruill (1816-1896)
settled and began to farm a significant portion of the land which
is present-day Dunwoody in the early 1840s. The first structure
built on the property was a log house, typical of its day and
common among pioneer families in this part of the country. Family
members recall that the house was two stories tall and that the
original walls were constructed of large, round logs. The log
house survives today only in the memories of older family members
and their stories, because it was torn down in 1905 after
becoming infested with termites.
The oldest extant part of
the current structure was built in 1867 as an addition to the log
house. It consists of two rooms, located in the back of the house.
One room currently houses the history exhibit and the other has
been converted to a rest room and hallway. These rooms were once
a kitchen/living area (the family refers to it as the "keeping
room") and an extra bedroom, respectively. The addition was
made in order to accommodate the large family of Thomas
Franklin Spruill (1846-1920), James' son. Open hearth
cooking was done in the large stone fireplace. The corner cabinet
has five let-in shelves and an enclosed cabinet. The "keeping
room" has original wooden wall paneling, which the family
switched from horizontal to vertical in the 1880s to give the
room a more modern look.
The Spruill
Family
The Spruills are among the first
settlers of Dunwoody and the earliest English settlers of North
America. Dr. Godfrey Spruill (b. 1650)
immigrated with his wife to the New World from England in the
1690s, settling in the Albemarle Sound area of North Carolina.
For the next five generations, Spruills played an important role
in the religious and political life of the fledgling colony.
By the late 1700s, a Spruill had settled
in Abbeville, South Carolina. When the first U.S. census was
taken in 1790, a William Spruill was living in
Abbeville with a wife and several children. Judging from the will
of William's father, John Spruill (d. 1808),
we can surmise the Spruills had lived in Abbeville for quite some
time and were prosperous farmers and land owners.
In the early 1800s, William's oldest son
Stephen (b. 1787) moved to DeKalb County,
Georgia. The 1830 census shows William later joined his son in
DeKalb, where he died in 1846. In the early 1800s, the Cherokee
and Creek Indians had ceded a good deal of land to Georgia and
Alabama. Georgia used a lottery system to distribute this land,
and Stephen Spruill obtained land in Sandy
Springs that stretched from Long Island Creek to what is now
Mt. Vernon Road.
In 1842, Stephen's son, James
Spruill (1816-1896), married Miss Millie Adams
(1821-1896). They moved from Sandy Springs to the current
site of the Spruill Homeplace, and were among the first
white settlers of Dunwoody. James' son, Thomas Franklin
Spruill (1846-1920), a private in the Confederate Army,
is listed as having surrendered to Union troops in Greensboro, North
Carolina in 1865. After Thomas married Naomi Martin (1844-1941)
in 1867, the "keeping room" addition was added to the
rear of the original Homeplace to accommodate the growing family.
Stephen
Thomas Spruill
When Thomas' son, Stephen
Thomas Spruill (1870-1967), married Miss
Mollie Lee Carter (1872-1932) of Sandy Springs in 1889,
the Homeplace was presented to them as a wedding gift. Stephen
was to live in the Homeplace and farm the land his family had
farmed for generations, until his death in 1967. It was Stephen
who, in 1905, tore down the original Homeplace because it was
infested with termites and rebuilt the Homeplace as we know it
today. Throughout the early twentieth century, Stephen acquired
land from neighboring farms, and by the time of his death was one
of the most prosperous farmers and largest land owners in both
Fulton and DeKalb counties. Most of Stephen and Mollie Lee's
descendants continue to live in the Dunwoody area.
The Box House
In 1905, Stephen Spruill (1870-1967),
Thomas' son tore down the log house built by his grandfather, and
using the 1867 addition as an anchor, he then built the "box
house." The "box house" consists of the four rooms
and a central hallway which runs the length of the house. The
hallway and high ceilings (14 ft.) facilitated air circulation
during hot Southern summers before air conditioning. With its
simple architecture, the Spruill House is a fine example of
Southern farmhouses from this period.
The house rests on a brick pier
foundation and uses a typical floor joint and wall stud system.
The walls are constructed of sawn wood studs, and the roof
exhibits a combination of both hip and roof gable roofing. The
exterior is composed of mill cut lap-board siding, which may very
well have been supplied by the Spruill's Mill in North Fulton County.
The front facade has six columns and two
pilasters. It features Victorian detailing, such as spindle work
and flat jig-saw cut trim, which give the house its special charm.
(This trim was added a few years after the house was built,
perhaps because woodworking machinery and the growth of the
railroad system made precut Victorian detailing more accessible
in those years.) The shutters on the front facade can swing open
or remain shut. The side and the back porches are informal and
less ornate. Similar to the railing currently found on the back
porch, the original facade railing was comprised of horizontal
strips of lumber.
In 1937, Stephen and his
second wife, Ethel Warren Spruill, remodeled and
updated the house. During the remodeling, the wall which
separated the living room and hallway was removed to make the
living room more spacious, and a modern kitchen and bath were
installed.
Smokehouse
& Seed House
There are two outbuilding still standing along with the house.
The smokehouse was built in the 1840s, at the same time as the
original log house. Iron hooks, upon which meat was hung to be
dried and cured, can still be seen along the smokehouse's walls.
The smokehouse is constructed of large round logs similar to
those in the original house.
The second outbuilding is a seed house. Here, staple farm
supplies, such as corn, wheat, and cotton seed were stored. The
seed house was built in the early twentieth century and is made
up entirely of mill cut lap-board siding, with no rounded logs.
Information from the Spruill
Center for the Arts, click on it for more information.
Additional information can be found at the another Spruill Center for the Arts
web page.
5339 Chamblee Dunwoody Road, Atlanta, GA.
|
